Google to Face a Record $3.4 Billion AntiTrust Fine in Europe

Google faces a record anti-trust penalty of about 3 BILLION Euros (US$3.4 Billion) from the European Commission in the coming days, according to reports.

After 7-years of the investigation, the European Commission filed anti-trust charges against Google last year for violating antitrust laws.

The European Union accused the search engine giant that it had abused its dominance

Google makes it mandatory for Chrome Apps to tell Users what Data they collect

In Brief
Chrome apps and extensions make things easier, but they can also do terrible things like spy on web users and collect their personal data.

But, now Google has updated its browser’s User Data Policy requiring all Chrome extension and app developers to disclose what data they collect.

Furthermore, developers are prohibited from collecting unnecessary browsing data and must also use

Google has also been Ordered to Unlock 9 Android Phones

The legal battle between Apple and the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) over a locked iPhone that belonged to one of the San Bernardino shooters may be over, but the Department of Justice (DoJ) are back in front of a judge with a similar request.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has discovered publicly available court documents that revealed the government has asked Google’s

Russia Rejects Google's Appeal and Orders to Stop Pre-Installing its own Android Apps

The Giant search engine Google has lost an anti-monopoly appeal in Russia against ruling related to its Android mobile OS



The Moscow Arbitration Court on Monday ruled that Google had violated its dominant position with the help of its free open source mobile platform "Android" by forcing its own apps and services like Youtube, Google Map, and others, on users — reducing competition.



The

Apple vs. FBI — Google Joins Tim Cook in Encryption Backdoor Battle

In the escalating battle between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Apple over iPhone encryption, former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden and Google chief executive Sundar Pichai just sided with Apple's refusal to unlock iPhone.



Yesterday, Apple CEO Tim Cook refused to comply with a federal court order to help the FBI unlock an iPhone owned by one of the

It Works! Google's Quantum Computer is '100 Million Times Faster' than a PC

Announcing the results of its experiment, Google says Quantum Computer is More than 100 Million times faster than a regular PC.



Two years ago, Google and NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) bought a D-Wave 2X quantum computer, which they have been experimenting at the U.S. space agency's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California for the past two years.



The goal

Google’s $85 Chromebit Lets You Turn Any Monitor or TV into a Computer

Google and Asus are finally ready to release their new micro Chrome OS computer called the Chromebit — that retails at a great price, just $85.



That is quite cheap for what is essentially a portable computer that you can take anywhere in your pocket.


Also Read: CHIP — The World's First $9 Computer.


Announced back in March, the Chromebit is a fully featured Computer-on-a-Stick that

It's Official: Google Becomes ALPHABET

"Alphabet is about businesses prospering through strong leaders and independence. In general, our model is to have a strong CEO, who runs each business, with Sergey and me in service to them as needed."



With this, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin combined all Google products and services under one roof - ALPHABET.



Revealed in their Google Investor's Blog, the newly formed Public

Google to Disable Weak SSLv3 and RC4 Protocols to Boost Internet Security

It is finally time to say GoodBye to the old and insecure Web security protocols.
Citing the long history of weaknesses in the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) 3.0 cryptographic protocol and the RC4 Cipher Suite, Google plans to disable support for both SSLv3 as well as RC4 stream cipher in its front-end servers.
While announcing on its official blog, the Search Engine giant said the

A New Company Called Alphabet Now Owns Google; Sundar Pichai Becomes New CEO

Well, this was a very unexpected move by Google.



Google Co-Founder Larry Page announced a restructuring of the whole company, revealing the creation of the umbrella "Alphabet" corporation.



But, don’t worry… Google isn’t dead! Rather, Google will become part of Alphabet.



Why Google Rebrands As ‘Alphabet’



Over time, Google, the Mountain View company has become a lot more than just a

Eddystone: Cross-Platform Beacon Format Gets Google Launch

Google is all set to introduce its upcoming Eddystone beacon format, which will work along with other API to offer hardcore connectivity solution. Eddystone beacon is expected to make it easier for variety of devices to communicate with each other in close proximity. Google had caused frenzy among the developers with its update where it talked about beacon with headline: “Lightning the way with BLE beacons.”

How Eddystone Beacon Will Work? 

Fundamentally, beacon is not a new concept rather it works on the age-old technique wherein it acts as a transmitter. Beacon will acts as a transmitter, and it will send out the information about a certain point and that particular information is later is picked up by a smartphone or tablet within its range. In this connectivity becomes fast paced and much more synchronized and streamlined than before.

In the earlier times, we used to have a lighthouse, which helped the sailors in navigating through the treacherous ocean. On the same idea, modern electronic beacons are designed and developed which helps in navigating to the precise location and contextual cues already fed in apps.

A beacon can work on different levels to provide much more comfort and swift operational capability such as it can label a bus stop so phone knows to keep the tick ready in advance. Similarly, museum app will be able to provide background on the work of the artist a person is viewing at that particular moment.

Eddystone Is Google Open Beacon Format

Google is known to develop and launch such services, which are free and provide wholesome user experience without spending a single dime. Similarly Eddystone is open beacon format from Google. Its specification shows that it includes a large number of broadcast frame type most importantly Eddystone-URL which acts as backbone of Physical Web.

Very soon, Google will begin its rolling out of features in different sets for the developers to build new apps based on this technology. Google will also roll out a new open format for Bluetooth low energy (BLE) beacons in order to communicate with people’s devices. Google had ensured that its Eddystone remains an open source project by getting an Apache v2.0 license.

Developers Can Develop Apps As Much They Love To

This license makes sure that this new revolutionary beacon is free for any who wishes to use and improve its functionality further. The manufactures of the physical beacons can also access this remarkable technology as well as utilize it in their beacons. Even embed in their existing beacons making it Eddystone compliant through a firmware update.

Eddystone beacon possesses some amazing feature, which includes extensibility which means new functionalities can be added with ease. Highly scalable and having the capability to communicate with a variety of devices running either iOS, Android with perfection.

Google believes that beacon will provide an important way of delivering better experience to the users of different apps by embedding Eddystone in the products and services.

Beacon technology is being praised by all but now it is required to get business and transit authorities as well as other private enterprise to invest in compliant hardware to make it a success.

In Tests, Yahoo Uses Google to Power Search Results and Ads

Presently, Yahoo is already in the deal of 10 years to use Microsoft's Bing to power its search results and due to that this software giant is not happy as Google is entering in its territory.

To work together, Yahoo and Google is testing:

According to the reports of New York Times, Yahoo and Google are entering into partnership to test the Google powered search results and search ads for Yahoo. However; the discovery was first time reported by Aaron Wall of, owner of SEO Book (One of the best company in industry). The more he added that this arrangement is only for the test and may be in future it will not convert into actual deal. According to Yahoo spokeswoman, “We are working together to provide the best experiences to our users and it’s our regular work to run small test or pilot projects with different partners to power up the search results for users benefit. The more she added that at this time we don’t have anything more to share.

Microsoft and Google didn’t respond immediately:

Google is the leading and its most popular search engine as it has more than 71 per cent market share in all over the world, as per the reports of NetMarketShare. However; in this list Yahoo lead by Marissa Mayer, former Google executive is at the third position with 9.6 per cent share in all over the world and Microsoft powered Bing search engine is at second position with 10 per cent market share. Only in US Google has more than 64.40 per cent share in search market, followed by Bing with 20.20 per cent and Yahoo with 12.70 per cent market share in search industry, as per the latest reports of ComScore.

Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo have seen the same search results in her career earlier when she was in Google and due to that she signaled that now our company is focusing on powering up the Yahoo search engines to cover more market share. But any search deal between Yahoo and Google will definitely come under antitrust scrutiny because European Commission has already antitrust pending cases about Google’s dominant position. However; earlier in April 2015, Yahoo and Microsoft have announced the agreement, which will provide flexibility to yahoo to enhance the search experience of users across multiple devices such as; mobile, tablets, and desktops. Whereas; the key component of agreement was that yahoo is free to get in partnership with other companies to power up its own search platforms.

In past, Microsoft has lost few important deals including recent deal with Facebook as in December 2014, Facebook announced that they have ended the deal with Bing to provide web search results through Bing because now we are focusing on helping the users to find what people are sharing on their walls through our Facebook search box. According to tech experts, its clear indication that Google is trying to enter in the Microsoft's territory.

Google Has Set Its Terrifying, Dreaming Image Robots on the Public

Google’s Images Recognizing Robots

Software engineers of Google has recently revealed the results of an experiment which looked at how computer can think, identify and understand objects, animals and people in images. Google has opened its images recognizing robots to all, enabling users to create strange and horrifying images from their very own images. It has released the somewhat horrifying, half amazing images created recently with pictures.

The company has made the `Deep Dream software available on code sharing website Github wherein users could download the same and run their own pictures through it. The software is said to operate on turning image recognising computers on themselves and by prompting the system to over interpret image, which they would otherwise pick out meaningless things, exaggerating them. For instance like turning clouds into bizarre llamas.

With regards to Google’s own image, it tends to transform thing into animals, with dogs being the favourite and eyes. There is also the possibility of overlaying everything with a swirly rainbow colouring. Google has stated that the technology could enable us in understanding where the creativity of human comes from and the same is being put to the test.

The Day Dream System

The `Day Dream’ system tends to feed an image via a layer of artificial neurons, asking an AI to improve as well as build certain features like edges. Over a period of time the pictures could get distorted which is morphed into something that is completely different or just a cluster of colourful random noise.

With the code for the system made available, user have the option of uploading an image of their choice and watch it metamorphose into a surrealistic image. On being fed with several pictures, the image recognition software developed by Google allows artificial neural network of computer to view shapes in images and creates strange, psychedelic and fantastic images which could be likened to entertainer art.

With immense deal of interest generated from the AI research published together with the generated images, Google decided to make the code for its algorithm available to the public. The source code needs to be hosted on a site and some software developers have hosted the same like Psychic VR Lab and Deep Neural Net Dreams where users can now upload a picture to these sites and run it through the algorithm in creating images of their choice.

Artificially Intelligent Neural Network of Google

Artificially intelligent neural network of Google comprises of 10 to 30 stacked layers of artificial neurons wherein each layer tends to look at images and detects various aspects like a corner or a shape and conveys information to the next layer till the final layer tends to formulate an answer.

At times the network understands shapes and decides to understand mild images such as clouds or faces as animals which portrays unusual effects layered over the images like plenty of creepy eyes staring back at the viewers, fantastic dog heads merged into objects and animals with striking touches. The engineers mentioned that `the techniques presented helps to understand and visualize how neural networks are able to carry out difficult classification tasks, improve network architecture and check what the network has learned during training.
It also make us wonder whether neural networks could become a tool for artists, a new way to remix visual concepts, or perhaps even shed a little light on the roots of the creative process in general’.

Google's Nest Labs Unveil HD Security Camera

Google’s Home Sensing Unit – Security Camera/Smoke Alarm 

Nest Labs, which is Google’s Home sensing division has revealed its latest set of a new version of home security camera enhancing technology connected to smart homes. The so called Nest Cam has been designed on technology obtained when Dropcam had been purchased by Nest last year for US4550 million. Dropcam founded in 2009, permitted users to install cameras in their home for the purpose of live viewing and recording combined with the option for night vision.

 The camera had the potential of shooting video at full 1080p high definition an improvement from the Dropcam’s 720p. It provides an 8X digital zoom, motion sensors, as well as leverages 8 infrared LEDs in order to capture flawless footages especially at night. Besides this it also had the capabilities of differentiating between the various kinds of movement in the videos together with alerts to the users should some untoward incidents takes place at home in their absence. The videos which is captured is said to be uploaded directly to the Nest Aware cloud storage wherein live feed could be run on a smartphone or a computer thus enabling Nest Cam with the capabilities of accurate alerts to the users in case of movement in the house.

Modernize Home Gear – Intelligent/Connected Devices 

It is said to be available in seven countries, inclusive of US, Canada and several parts of Europe, namely Germany and the U.K. Google’s Nest unit is putting in resources in its product line-up in convincing consumers that they need to modernize their home gear with intelligent, connected devices while competing with rivals like Apple and Samsung. If users intent to review recorded videos, they would have to buy a subscription and customers can pay subscription fee of £8 and £24 per month in order to keep the video for 10 and 30 days respectively.

Nest Product – the Protect smoke alarm and carbon monoxide detector, another product unveiled, detects fire quicker than the first generation product according to Nest and comes at a price of $99 and will be shipped next month. It appears to be thinner and has various features which automatically ensure its working while it avoids false warnings. Nest is said to be partnering with home insurance companies which includes American Family Insurance and Liberty Mutual Insurance with its Protect product.

Mobile/Desktop App – Control Nest Devices 

Qualified consumers could get their device for free or at reduced cost to receive discounts on insurance premiums through reward program. Tony Fadell, co-founder of Nest Labs has his focus in getting the product paid off when he was at Apple, where he had worked during the rise of the company in 2001. He had been a long time deputy to co-founder Steve Jobs as well as central to the development of the iPod and iPhone.

At the time of the event in San Francisco, the company also unveiled a new mobile and desktop app which will help users in controlling all their Nest devices and with the inclusion of the Nest Cam, the company has now three products inclusive of the Nest Protect and Nest thermostat. These products are a part of internet connected devices collecting sensitive data which come under Google’s umbrella. According to Nest’s senior product manager and head of its developer program, Greg Hu commented during an interview following the announcement, that Google will not gain any data unless authorised by the users. That authorisation, which was announced earlier, enables a variety of third party services and Google services to inter-relate with Nest devices.

Mind Blowing Radar-based Gesture Recognition Technology for Everything

Since it introduced at the annual Google I/O conference, Project Soli has been trending on the Internet.



Project Soli is one of Google's latest cutting-edge experiments that could actually transform the way humans interact with technology.



Project Soli is not a wearable watch you might think it is.



So what is Project Soli?




It's you.



Yes, you heard it right. Google's secretive

How Google Is Tracking Your Movie and Event Activities

No doubt, You must be aware that Google tracks you, but what you probably did not realize is how precisely and till what extent it tracks you.



Well, Google knows which movies I watched where, when, at what time and with how many of my friends, and knows it so well — even my eyebrows raised slightly in surprise!



Yes, you heard right.



If you are using your Gmail account like I do,

Google to Offer Mac-Friendly Version of Chrome

Much after people reduced the use of old-school Microsoft Internet Explorer and chose the most beloved browser Google Chrome, Google finally announced Mac friendly version of the web browser, which will consume less battery and will offer better performance. It was high time for US tech giant Google to spread their wing into iMacs and Mac OS, as the company now expects the Chrome to work with its full potential in Mac computers. According to tech pundits, Google have placed a well-planned and firm bet by releasing Mac-friendly Chrome, only to triumph Apple’s own web browser, Safari. Though Safari works just perfectly as a web browser on Apple systems and offers lot additives, Google officials and developers are confident enough to beat the likes of Safari and to claim the favourite spot for Mac-freaks.

The news got proper shape when Senior chrome engineer Peter Kasting recently announced an update to Google chrome with some intelligent tweaks are coming very soon. Though Google have not announced any launch date, but the update details are coming from trusted official sources. According to official sources, Google developers’ team is currently testing the latest tweaks, which are expected to reduce the load by chrome on the processor and also promises for longer battery life and enhanced performance.

What is coming with Mac-friendly Chrome! 

Last week Casting posted on Google+ about the Chrome update for Mac users and stated that the new Chrome version will change how it processes the idle tabs, which are not in use at that point of time. In technical words, the new chrome will render the tabs differently and the unused tabs will be less prioritised further. The tests conducted have showed better browsing performance, better idle wake up time and also showed less battery consumption, which have been always a great concern on Mac systems. Google have also integrated some intelligent moves with new Chrome, like waking up from low-power mode to check necessary tasks and it will reduce idle wake time.

For Mac systems, some of the biggest problems reported for Chrome are huge battery consumption, high memory acquisition. Google tech team have been preparing Chrome for this launch for a long time now and stated that the team has been restless during this time as they could not allow their users are having issues with their product. Also the newer version of Chrome is coming with stable enabled flash service.

Vs Safari

According to the technology experts, Google Chrome is going for a direct assault with Safari by matching their performance graph on Mac systems. Certain quality check tests have been conducted and showed significant boost in performance level. For example, a test showed the consumption of processing power by new version of Chrome reduced to 0.1 percent from 0.3 percent.

According to the official source, Google will be releasing the new version of Chrome through its beta channel in a while and the final version will be launched in next month or so.

Google’s Security News: Malware’s Down, and You’re Heeding More of Its Warnings

According to the Google’s security product manager, the company defines their success in simple term- invisibility. As per Stephan Somogyi they are targeting as the main outcome when we encountered a blank browser window appearing in front of him. He was able to give some insight on the status of the online security, during the Google’s I/O conference at the half-hour presentation called the Second annual Google Security update at I/O.

Phishing and Malware Sites: 

He gave some more details on the Safe Browsing service of the company. He calls them as a collection of systems that have the ability to hunt down the badness all across the net. It has the ability to protect the visitors who are searching the web using the Google search site or even Chrome, Safari as well as Firefox. This indicates the total reach to the audience amounting to 1.1 billion people.

According to the reports released by the company, they have located that the Malware is becoming is not a huge problem anymore. But they have also found that phishing sites that are able to fool the customers into entering their details like password and more financial details are increasing in numbers.

During the last week of Mat, they were able to detect nearly 14,977 malware sites and nearly 33,571 phishing sites using the safe browsing. The Malware has shown a big drop and Phishing has shown a bigger increase. Somogyi has given all the credit to the enhanced security in all their operating system in every device. Due to this the Malware authors are now more concentrating on the phishing sites and targeting the software’s.

The much needed push for encryption: 

Google has been among the first companies who were advocating the use of encryption to avoid people from snooping on users online. The acceleration to this push came in the form of the revelations made by Edward Snowden, who confirmed that NSA has been eavesdropping on their traffic from quite some time. He further expressed his anger pertaining to the effort that is being put forth by Google to get other emails providers to try and adapt the TLS, which is the Transport Layer security encryption. Through this all the third party companies care unable to reading the messages when they are transit.

The company is hoping to reach to larger companies that work in sending email and find out the reasons why they are unable to implement TLS. But from the perspective of the company, they do not want to resort to public shaming.

They are not ready to disclose the names of the company who have still not followed or implemented TLS. Compared to TLS, Google has been able to attain much more success in terms of encouraging different websites to implement HTTPS encryption to completely secure the user visit to websites. The company is making all effort to ensure that the users feel completely safe when spending their time online.

Google: Your Hands May Be the Only Interface You’ll Ever Need

Project Soli – Hands Only User Interface

Wearable devices tend to get smaller and smaller and our hands and fingers find it difficult in keeping up with them. Hence gearheads at Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects group – ATAP have been working on ways in controlling devices with simple hand gestures. Google ATAP is aware that the hand is the best method for interaction with devices though not everything seems to be a device. Project Soli the latest wearable is not a wearable one would think, neither a watch but ‘you’.

Project Soli intends to make the hands and fingers the only user interface that would be needed. It is actually radar which is adequately small to be fitted into a wearable like a smart watch where the small radar tends to pick up on the movements on real time, utilising the movements made to modify its signal. While the hand rests, it is actually moving slightly which tends to end as a baseline response on the radar and moving the hand away or from side to side with regards to the radar could change the signal and amplitude. Crossing the fingers or making a fist could also change the signal.

ATAP to have APIs

In order to make sense of the signal to a service or app, ATAP would be having APIs which could tap in the deep machine learning of Project Soli. However, it is still early for the new entry though it has got the people at Google I/O eager and instead of going hands-free, Project Soli would make the hands the UI which could be a better option than voice control could be. Ivan Poupyrev, technical program lead for Google ATAP comments that `should Project Soli become a reality someday, users would be able to control smart watches, fitness trackers as well as other devices with the use of gestures in utilising their smartphone, only without the phone’.

 He informed the audience at Google I/O that their hands tend to be always with them and are ergonomic and could be the only interface ever needed in controlling wearable devices. Nevertheless, gesture based interfaces tend to already exist and several of them such as the Kinect or PlayStation Move utilise camera in detecting the hand movements. Thus they work only when there happens to be clear lines of sight which are worthless in the dark.

Flares out Radar Signals – Numerous Antennae

The Soli chip is said to flare out radar signals from numerous antennae, thousands of time each seconds creating an arena that could measure the minute movements of the fingers, detecting when the fingers are crossed or record signals at once from both hands. It is a kind of software developers generating a vocabulary in interpreting each gesture, translating it into action similar to deleting a message or taking a call on the smartwatch.

The latest radar chip has the capabilities of a range of 5 feet or more, enabling it to be integrated to all types of devices which include the walls of the home. Probably there may be a time in the near future that one may be capable of turning on the lights on snapping the fingers or turn up the volume on Sonos by turning an imaginary dial in the air. Presently Project Soli is just a research project.            

Google's 'Smart' Food Diary Is Actually Kind Of Dumb

Google – Automated Food Diary to Estimate Calorie Count

Google has been building an automated food dairy which could help to estimate calorie counts from the images taken of our meal according to a report in Popular Science. Named Im2Calories, the project is said to utilise technology from DeepMind, which is an AI start-up Google acquired in 2014. Google has filed a patent for Im2Calories, however there is no mention yet on when the service is likely to be made available.

Meanwhile, several other companies are making similar attempts on the projects like Im2Calories which are being supported by equally questionable science. Im2Calorie is said to measure the size of the food, in absolute terms as well as relative to what is on the plate and could also identify the condiments. According to the report, it does not even matter if the picture tends to be high resolution or not. Presently, the technology is still imprecise in estimating calorie counts.

According to Kevin Murphy, a researcher at Google acknowledges as much to Popular Science stating that `it’s okay fine, maybe we get the calories off by 20%. It does not matter’. The focus for Google is in minimizing those inaccuracies over a period of time, claims Murphy. There does not seem to be any doubt in Google’s ability in collecting and processing data from large section of users though the company would still have to solve a big problem for the function of Im2Calories – calorie counting could be unreliable.

Counting Calories – Look at Kinds of Calories Eaten

A main study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2011 observed that the quality of food is a main contributing factor than quantity. Dr Dariush Mozaffarian, lead author of the study informed the New York Times - `Conventional wisdom – to eat everything in moderation eat fewer calories and avoid fatty foods, isn’t the best approach.

Just counting calories won’t matter much unless you look at the kinds of calories you’re eating’. However if calories seems to a good measure for health, food labels, - the basis of Google’s date, has also considered to be inaccurate. In 2010, there has been much uncertainty with regards to calorie counting where David Kirchoff, the CEO then of the Weight Watchers acknowledged that `calorie-counting has become unhelpful’ for those intending to lose weight. Since then the company is said to have abandoned its calorie first approach.

Im2Calories – A Potential Tool

Im2Calories, which is the potential tool, had been announced at the Rework Deep Learning Summit, recently. Murphy had unveiled a project that utilises `sophisticated deep learning algorithms to analyse a still image of food, estimating how many calories could be on the plate. In one instance, the system viewed an image and counted `two eggs, two pancakes and three strips of bacon.

Although the food stuff does not seem to be a universal unit of measurement, the system could scale the size of each piece of foot with regards to the plate together with the condiments. Murphy has no intention of shaming users with this new system but wants to have the `process of keeping a food diary and awareness of foods and this seems to be much easier than feeding information manually to a food app which could include portions of food items, types of food and much more.

It is assumed that the latest tool Im2Calories could be popular especially in the US since obesity tends to be a crisis. However, even if Im2Calories does not seem to be accurate, Murphy is of the opinion that the new system will tend to have an impact on the users.